SRC-417

Free-Space Power Transmission. Proceedings of a workshop held at NASA Lewis Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio, March 29-30 1988

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-0933 In 1988 the leading experimenter listed three numbers side by side: the best efficiency physics allows for beaming power and converting it back, 76 per cent; an experimental figure, 54; and what a solar power satellite design assumes, 58 to 72. The design range is above the experimental figure, and its top end is close to the limit.
• CLM-0934 In 1988 the NASA centre running the work said the solar power satellite programme did not stop because the technology failed. It stopped because the up-front investment was more than American utilities would risk, and because the energy crisis ended. The same document reports that the centre's own three-year rectenna research at very high frequencies produced encouraging results and no working devices.
• CLM-0940 Two NASA efforts to build rectennas at much higher frequencies than the standard 2.45 GHz ended without a working device. One concluded the approach it had chosen would not work; the other simply ran out without completing anything.

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